Do you understand someone else's laughter???

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Hello. How do you teach a child to understand another's laughter???
My son (4 ) thinks that when someone is laughing that they are laughing at him.. this is so hard to make him understand that they are laughing for another reason.. (similar to theroy of the mind???)
he will start to cry and yell at the person to stop laughing at him.
I would appreciate any ideas/thoughts to the matter.
Michele

This is probably due to his inability to learn or understand society & their actions as a whole.

I've only started to understand it recently, that Society isn't logical (thanks to Alex for explaining that to me). Society doesn't make sense. That's what makes it so hard for someone with AS to function in society.

From a personal standpoint: I just ignore laughter. The jokes people pull aren't funny to me normally, perhaps that's why I too assumed that when people laughted it was with malcious intent.

Perhaps you could get people around him to inform him when they're issuing a joke, being sarcastic or using a metaphor?

Another sad thing about humanity: our dominance and intimidation rituals and our acknowledgement of pleasant thoughts have similar appearances. Tell your son that people who are laughing to make him feel bad and inferior usually will continue to watch him while they "laugh" or at least move some part of their body aggressively in his direction. (Even with their back turned they will usually swivel their head towards the object of derision.) This is both because they are afraid their victim will rush at them and can't let down their guard, and also to reassert how they have control and lack of trust for you.

People who laugh because they're having fun show a markable decrease in attention elsewhere. Thoughts that make us laugh are quite distracting. They may try and point, or pay attention, but the funnier it is the more they'll hug their sides, squint their eyes, look downwards and hunch over. When your son sees someone reacting like this, he has to think to himself that they are holding no animosity towards him, but are rather carried away in their happiness. Even if he has done something that they laugh at, they're not laughing to degrade him or intimidate him into not repeating the behavior (the weapon of social conformity). He should instead realize that he's in some way made them just tickled pink, and once they stop laughing they will probably behave friendly towards him if he accepts them and continues on the conversation casually.

To summarize:
laughing at you = dominating and intimidating with harsh laughter
lauging with you = reactinng to something about you they like enough to start laughing

ladybug, that could be true of the noise sensativity as well, i never thought of it/
he just started to listen to music without screaming- maybe the combination like you said is the true problem..
do you think he is to young to understand this issue- people are not laughing at you...
he only knows 2 emotions (happy, sad) and sometimes he can get them wrong.
he is learning mad;" he says you mean at me?"- he means to say are you made at me.. but he does get this one confused often...
I will keep practicing them ( the emotions) we try to teach only one at a time until he understands it 100% the we move to the next one.
I did not really feel that laughing was an emotion- but maybe it is..
michele

thanks for the replys